Our Russian publishers just gave us permision to put up some soundbytes from the Russian dialogue. So here they are, click on the text to get an mp3. Note that these may not be exact translations, but they match up with English text at that point.

Hee hee. I like Max, he sounds good. Will there be a filter on the Xenarch? He sounds a bit human and emotional. Of course, I'm not a Russian speaker, so mabe it sounds different when ou can understand it.

Weeble.

PS - Apologies for mis-spellings - some of the kes on m wireless keboard aren't working. (Ever 't' in this post has been pasted from the clipboard.) I think it needs new batteries.

Yeah I have to agree, that's the only thing that struck me as odd. I'd always imagined them in my head sounding like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica - the old one that is, I haven't seen the new series.

I think they are happy keeping them as is, and they know their territory best...

That queen sounds pretty scary! I hope I don't meet her! It sounds like the actors really enjoyed what they were doing though, and I appreciate that. Most voiceover work these days is outsourced to specialist companies, and they often sound a bit 'uninterested'. If anyone has a copy of Gunmetal on the xbox (easy to find in bargain bins these days ) try running it in Italian - the guy doing it sounds like he's relaxing by a pool

thare all good until you get to max (he sounds just strange) and the zenarch and arknid do not sound mechanickal enough (the zenarch sounds like a fat lazy couch potato i toought thay only had thouse in the states)

Yeah, they're not exact translations. I know because I'm Russian In case anybody cares, here's what they say translated back to English. It's not 100% exact of course because making a literal translation doesn't always sound good, and because my English isn't very good yet.

Rin: Be careful out there. We lost you once already, repeating that sad experience isn't necessary. (this last part hard to translate exactly)

rather different IMHO, sounds much less emotional than the English version, and Rin isn't directly referring to herself.

JJ: Boys (this is inexact), come back to the station. These minerals are going to be enough for the reparations. The Zeus' (???) shield was heavily damaged, and your ship took a beating too. And as if it wasn't enough, we lost our main engineer! It's the first time I'm in space, and now I'll have to be responsible for all the work. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix all this.

Rather inexact translation because it's impossible to get it exact, but in more or less the same style.

Max: Wow! Now that's a ship! Ahem, sorry. This looks like one of the main ships. Do you see the armor it has? But it will still have a weak spot. The last time we destroyed similar ships we got important information. I think this one isn't going to let it go so easily.

Xenarch: Stop. We, Xenarch control this place. Your things (impossible to translate, see note!) won't help you here. If you have bad intentions better leave at once.

Well, this is just weird... almost the reverse of what I'd expect. Sounds like somebody trying to be "cool", and very colloquial. How to put it... maybe an Ali G, but definitely not a robot. My translation definitely lacks all this "coolness".

Also, what they called your weapons is well, weird. "pukalki", this is made from the verb "pukatt", which means "to fart".

Sounds funny to me, but very un-robot-like

Arachnid Queen: Enough talk. Prepare to die. *evil laugh*

sounds more like a witch to me

Overall, not too bad, although the mood changes a bit in some of them, the Aegis is called Zeus, and you should change the Xenarch into space cowboys or something similar for the Russian version

I know! She sounds like a fox! I'm tempted to ask if our publishers have any pictures of the voice actors, but they might think I'm sad.

Thanks for the translations, they are pretty interesting! I am aware of a few name changes - Zeus being one of them (Maybe Aegis is a bit silly in Russian?) and I think one of the characters has been renamed (possibly JJ??)

About the Aegis -> Zeus thing I think that they just decided to to use a more familiar term. "Aegis" sounds okay in Russian, and doesn't mean anything silly, but probably nobody knows what that is, so they went with Zeus instead.

This is just the impression I get. Unfortunately I left Russia when I was 10, so although I still can talk and understand it fine I'm quite detached from the culture.

Now the Xenarch have me really baffled. I don't know how to explain exactly, but they sound like space surfer dudes, or something of that kind.

We've just been informed that there will be some post processing done on the voiceovers for non-human characters.

It's actually quite impressive that our publishers actually bother to keep an eye on the board and take note of input (allthough in this case the already had it in the bag, so there was no need for concern )

I agree with Fost about JJ. I thought the Max was really cool. He sounded like an old eccentric tinker, with brains.
Although, I really didn't like the Renden voice. I figured she'd still have a voice similar to the voice of the chief engineer, whom I assumed would sound less like the wicked witch of the south-southwest and more like...a normal person. Although I agree that the Xenarch just sound funny, and I thought Rin should have a higher pitched voice, but that's just me being picky.
Overall though, I think the voice casting is well done. (Better than what you see in most animes anyway.